Object-oriented mechanisms, such as classes and inher- itance, and concurrency mechanisms, such as threads and locks, provide two separate software structuring dimensions. The development of concurrent object- oriented software requires both dimensions to be taken into account simultaneously. Previous research has identified that substantial effort is required by program- mers to avoid clashes in structuring software along these separate dimensions. This has led to the design of con- current object-oriented programming models that inte- grate object-oriented features with concurrent execu- tion and synchronization, eliminating the need to con- sider two separate dimensions when developing concur- rent object-oriented software. Although several issues that have to be addressed by such programming models have been identified, there is no consent on a program- ming model that addresses all these issues simultane- ously. In addition, little experience has been gained from the use of proposals addressing these issues. We have used Python to prototype and experiment with the use of a novel concurrent object-oriented programming model called ATOM. In this paper we present the model's main features and illustrate their use for concurrent program- ming in Python. We also provide information on a free prototype implementation of the model. Taking advan- tage of Python's extensibility we were able to prototype the model without undergoing a lengthy development ef- fort and with no need to change the Python language or its interpreter.
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